You have met Strunk’s rules in Concision and Active and Passive Voice. William Strunk Jr., an English professor at Cornell, wrote The Elements of Style in 1918 as a short handbook for his students. The 1918 text is in the public domain; the expanded “Strunk and White” edition (E. B. White, 1959 and later) is a different, newer book.
| Rule (1918) | What it is for |
|---|---|
| 10. As a rule, begin each paragraph with a topic sentence; end it in conformity with the beginning. | readers know what each paragraph is about |
| 11. Use the active voice. | the doer and the action come first |
| 12. Put statements in positive form. | “He usually came late,” not “He was not very often on time” |
| 13. Omit needless words. | every word does work |
| 15. Express co-ordinate ideas in similar form. | parallel ideas look parallel |
| 18. Place the emphatic words of a sentence at the end. | the point rings longest |
Key idea
Classic style rules are rules of thumb for clear writing. Know what each rule is for; then you can follow it nearly always, and break it when breaking it serves the reader better.
Why it works
Strunk said so himself, in his introduction: “It is an old observation that the best writers sometimes disregard the rules of rhetoric. When they do so, however, the reader will usually find in the sentence some compensating merit, attained at the cost of the violation. Unless he is certain of doing as well, he will probably do best to follow the rules.”
Worked example: A good reason to break a rule
Rule 11 says “Use the active voice.” In a paragraph about the town’s oldest bridge, a student writes: “The bridge was built in 1911 by local stonemasons.” Should she change it to active?
- The paragraph is about the bridge, so the bridge belongs in the subject position.
- The passive keeps the focus where it belongs. That is a compensating merit.
- Strunk gives the same kind of example: which voice depends on what the paragraph is about.
Answer: No: the passive serves the paragraph’s focus, which is a good reason to keep it.
Worked example: Follow the rule
Rule 12: “Put statements in positive form.” Revise: “The plan was not without some problems that were not small.”
- Double negatives (not without, not small) make the reader do arithmetic.
- Say what is, positively.
Answer: “The plan had serious problems.”
Common mistake
Treating rules of thumb as laws. Strunk wrote that the best writers sometimes break the rules, for some compensating merit. Some modern linguists, such as Geoffrey Pullum (2009), have also criticized parts of the book’s grammar advice. Check: when you break a rule, can you name what the reader gains? If not, follow the rule.